...sat straight
up in her bed, wide awake, the sheets soaked with her sweat. Taking a deep
breath to reorient herself, Mae wiped the sweat and tears from her face with
shaky hands. Slowly she got up and went to the kitchen to start a pot of coffee.
Turning on the pot, she glanced at the clock above the sink. Only 3am. Mae knew
that there would be no more sleep for her tonight. She was getting used to
sleepless nights, and nights filled with terror. She'd been having nightmares
about spiders for as long as she could remember. She'd tried every means
possible to get rid of them, and to sleep, but to no avail.
Mae sighed and drank her coffee. At 24, she looked more
like she was 50. Although still attractive, with a young, healthy body, the lack
of sleep throughout her life had aged her face considerably. An only child, she
grew up a rich, spoiled brat. She was a nasty bitch to everyone she knew, and
anyone she didn't know too. In many ways, she was a female Scrooge. Only not as
old, and much better looking. She didn't have any friends, but that was how she
liked it. Mae worked as a newspaper reporter for the Sun Times. Writing was the
one thing in life she enjoyed.
Draining the last of her coffee, she got up and went to
the office she had set up in her house. Turning on her laptop, Mae waited
impatiently for it to load. Within minutes she was connected to the internet,
and using her favorite search engine to do more research on spiders. It seemed a
little psychotic to her, but her therapist suggested that if she knew all she
could about what it is she is afraid of, then maybe she would no longer fear
them. So far the only results of her research had been more detailed spiders in
her nightmares, more varieties of spiders, and shot nerves. In a twisted way,
she found the spiders fascinating though. The little things that she remembered
from her readings gave her new nightmares, but a new look at the object of her
fear too. Take, for example, the black widow spider. She read somewhere that
this most poisonous of spiders likes to hide under toilet seats in outhouses.
Not something she liked to think about, seeing as black widows attack when
disturbed.
Tonight she was researching the black and yellow argiope,
a spider that frequented her dreams the most often, and which most people knew
as the garden spider, or the writing spider. They were any where between
1/16" to 1 3/4" in length, with long legs decorated with bands of
black and yellow. The underbelly of these spiders is black with yellow dashes
down the center. The top of the spider is black down the center with yellow on
either side, and whitish-yellow dots along the border of the two colors.
Scrolling down the page Mae came to a rather large picture of an argiope in its
web.
Without meaning to she screamed and slammed the laptop down.
Her reaction to the garden spider picture was nothing
compared to the night she had researched tarantulas. The first site she had gone
to opened with a tarantula attacking its prey, but positioned in a way that it
looked like the person looking at the site was the prey. Mae had never been so
scared in her life. She actually pulled the plug on her laptop and ran all the
way to her mother's house, certain that the tarantula was after her. When she
closed her eyes she could still see that spider as it appeared on the screen:
the eyes staring right at her, front legs raised, it's claws visible, the
spider's mouth open in what seemed to her to be a sneer of contempt.
It reminded Mae of when she got bit by a house spider. The
bite wasn't bad, a little itchy and red. What scared her though is her cousin
got bit at the same time...only by a brown recluse spider. He was trying to
scare her again and so had picked up a spider he found and was trying to put it
on her ear. She had screamed of course, and hit him, and the spider fell down
his shirt, landing, of all places, on his chest over his heart, where it
promptly bit him several times. He started scratching the bites furiously,
making them worse. When his mother looked at what he was scratching at so bad,
she gasped in shock to see the numerous red welts on his chest.
Thinking it was
just mosquito bites, she put calamine lotion on them and sent him on his way.
She paid for her mistake...within a week the bites had gotten so bad and the
infection had spread so much that it had reached her cousin's heart. There was
nothing the doctor's could do to save him. At 14 yrs old her cousin's life
ended.
Mae shivered and got up. She had to be in to work at 6
anyway, so she decided to get ready now, and then stop for breakfast on her way.
Hesitating outside the bathroom door, Mae couldn't help but remember her cousin
forcing her to watch Arachnophobia when she was just little, as a cruel
joke. Ever since then, she'd been afraid of spiders coming at her while she was
taking her shower. As she'd always done though, Mae took a deep breath and
continued. After her shower, Mae checked her clothes carefully before putting
them on, as well as emptying her shoes to make sure no spiders lurked there.
When she got to her car she checked the seat, pedals, and wheel for spiders. She
knew how paranoid what she did seemed, but didn't care. She was not going to
risk being bit by another spider.
Looking down Mae saw spiders coming at her from all directions. She screamed
again, looking wildly for a direction to run in, and finding none, only the glow
of the full moon above. All of a sudden she felt hundreds of little legs
crawling up her own legs and looked down to see the spiders had reached her, and
were climbing up. Screaming, Mae started kicking her legs and shaking them,
trying to knock the spiders off. Spider after spider crawled up her leg, and as
they crawled, she felt spider after spider bite her. Her whole body screamed and
shook. She turned back around just as the giant black widow decided to come down
from her web....to eat her next prey. In seconds the spider was towering over
her, it's fangs coming down to strike. Mae screamed and...